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EU Patents Won't Stay Dead
sconeu writes "Apparently the EC is ignoring the restart directive, and has placed software patents as an A-Item on the Council of Minister's agenda with an aim for approval on Monday." From the article: "The directive is pitched as offering greater protection for software developers. Opponents, including many in the European parliament, fear it will simply provide big players, including America's powerful and litigious software giants, with a very large stick to batter upstart developers and the Open Source movement." Update: 03/04 22:04 GMT by Z : And just as quick as you please Denmark stops things in their tracks. Denmark's objection means that there will have to be further debate before the patents get the stamp.
Apparently, the Danes have stepped up to kill this one! http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. php?t=428
:wq
Why do Europeans allow a non-elected commission to determine economic policy?
The Euuropean union is a young and a very fastmoving project. I believe very few europeans know what the parlament actully do and what the commission do. I'm a swede and very seldom we get to vote, there is close to zero follow-up on the people we vote on in the media and frankly we don't know what they do. I don't think democracy is one of the strengths of the EU right now. Maybe in the future.
Today, the danish comission of European affairs ORDERED their governement to not treat the new software patent directive as a "done deal".
The Dutch governement had earlier said it was hoping on a redraft opf the bill, but would not block the vote, something the German Governement had also done.
In the meantime the Dutch VVD also brought in a motion to try to get an amendment to bring "community patents into the bill, which then would have to be completely redrafted.
Source: www.webwereld.nl
I dont know about you folks, but I'm thinking: "It ain't over 'till the Fat Lady sings"
And I somewhat like the idea of a commons of patents.
As heise reports, the Danish parliament has bindingly instructed their secretary of commerce to vote AGAINST software patents,
so the law can't be nodded through.
According to their parliaments some other ministers are instructed (more or less bindingly) to support another country's approach to restart the whole process:
Poland, Netherlands, Spain (had already voted against it in the last session), maybe Germany (but represented by some stubbor a..hat, so..)
Also it is likely that some countries that were neutral during the last voting (like Austria, Belgium, Italy) will support a complete restart.
If you look at the BSA web page, you will see that the members of this alliance are primarily US businesses: they list Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc etc as their members.
So in this case the original poster is correct: this law seems to have been "bought" by US businesses.
The members of the commission.
Since telling it nicely doesn't work, and telling it with lots of money is out of the question, we should find other ways to uhm...convince them. The first step is to peel them out of this anonymus term "European Commission", so they can't hide in it.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Another interesting tidbit from the article:
Just FYI, the parliament did make significant amendments to the directive, effectively keeping the status quo and keeping software patents invalid, back in September 2003, but in the process made some parts of the directive contradict itself.
However, the working party that reworked the directive for the Council removed the bulk of the parliament's amendments, while promising that they had put in additional protections against software patents, when in fact the protections were meaningless.
It was this theoretically neutered directive that the Council agreed to in May 2004 by a slim majority. Now that members have realised what they've done (agree a directive that allows patents), some are now trying to prevent this directive from being rubber-stamped as an A-list item, as you mentioned, despite the pressure of the Commission to force through the may 2004 version. I believe this is the 'common position' stage, step 9.
If it goes onto its second reading, the EP can still amend or block the directive, but it's a lot harder to do so, given the absolute majority required.
Here's hoping sufficient people in the Council can block the directive as an A-list item, and either force a restart or at least knock it back to a B-list item again for further discussion.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
5 of the flowchart
No, they appear to be on step 9 or 10.
(I believe that) the Parliament didn't make any modifications to the directive at the time of the first reading
The Parliment did amend the directive. In fact Parliment did an excellent job. We WANT that version passed. The Council simply threw out essentially all of the of Parliments amendments. In fact they proceeded to re-amend it to be even more extreme and further from the Parliments position. They then had the gall to call it a "common position", to claim it was some sort of compromise and concilliation with Parliment. This is where we are now, they are attempting to officially sign off on this "common position" and pass it back to parliment.
I hate missleading names. It really shouldn't be titled a "common position" at all. The Council is certainly supposed to draft it in an effort to resolve differences with Parliment, but as this case shows there is no reason to expect it actually *is* any sort of common position.
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